Monday, September 27, 2010

The Walled City on suckerPUNCH















I made it on suckerPUNCH's front page today! Very exciting. This is one of my favorite websites for seeing the latest in design and architecture. Now I'm featured alongside of some of my favorite designers!

http://www.suckerpunchdaily.com/

Walled City has also racked up invitations to two festivals: The Zero Film Festival and the 7th Annual Big Apple Film Festival.


http://www.zerofilmfest.com/
http://www.bigapplefilmfestival.com/

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Stockyard Unit 22 rough WIP#1


STOCKYARD Prototype Unit 22. Enhanced bloodhound sensory organs. Very rough. Bad topo, etc. Will block out body next.



Friday, September 17, 2010

Stockyard Armored Unit

Tried a new medium...copics on vellum

Stockyard Overlord Cabal

Headress Implant Dancer

Headress Implant

Conspirator

Secret Laboratory

Stockyard Factory Drone

StockYard Dream Sequence

Floating Landscape City

Long Hair Haggard

Selina White Wig

StockYard Helmet


 

Chubs

SkeletalBot

Drunken Master Sketches


Dandy Bear

Corrupted

MaskBot

Redd Pose, concept art for Walled City

Spider Angler

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

How would you say "The Walled City" comments on graffiti culture?

I was asked this question about my film from a  curator, and I wanted to be clear that graffiti wasn't being used to fulfill the necessity for trend in our commercial culture, nor promotion of grafitti culture, nor hip hop culture. It stands for something more important, which I think is often missed when looking at graffiti. Beyond the defacement of valuable public/private property, there is something much more primal at work here. It simple terms, it stands for resistance against our physical boundaries (real or imaginary) which are arbitrary and contrived.





 













How would you say "The Walled City" comments on graffiti culture?
Well, "The Walled City" is definitely inspired by graffiti, but it by no means attempts to define it. The Walled City of Kowloon in Hong Kong was a place of sustainable anarchy for the less privileged. In many ways it blurred political and social boundaries. On paper, it was a plot of land owned by China, but it existed inside a British colony. Graffiti to me is a form of blurring as well. In practice it is illegal and can be seen as defacement of public property. However, to some, it is a form of art and a way for the people to blur the boundaries set up by society and to make these spaces their own. In extreme cases, boundaries can manifest themselves as walls such as the Berlin wall, the Great Wall of China, (or its modern equivalent,  The Great Firewall of China) and The Kowloon Walled City. These walls also happen to be an ideal painting surface for street art. Ironically, there was no physical wall* that separated the contemporary Walled City from Hong Kong, other than a perceived one, which was created by politics and society.

*The original fortress walls were long dismantled by the Japanese occupation forces of WWII to create the foundation of Kai Tek airport
 
The Walled City